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Foreign Bank Entry and Entrepreneurship
Laura Alfaro Thorsten Beck Charles W. Calomiris*
This version: October 2015
Abstract: Using unique firm-level data across 48 developing countries and 36 manufacturing industries we gauge the importance of international banks’ presence for promoting entrepreneurship, as measured by business formation. Our results suggest that greater foreign bank presence fosters greater business formation, especially in industries with higher needs for external finance. The effect is particularly strong when the foreign banks present are headquartered in other developing countries. We also investigate how an industry’s use of relatively standardized inputs affects the advantages it reaps from foreign bank entry. In developing countries, the effect on business formation of foreign bank presence is greater in industries with more standardized inputs, especially when the foreign banks present are from other developing countries. The effects of foreign bank presence on business formation are greater in economies with stronger legal enforcement, and foreign bank entrants from developed economies are especially dependent on stronger legal frameworks; banks entrants from developing countries have larger effects on business formation in developing countries where legal protections are relatively weak.
Keywords: Financial Liberalization, Economic Development, Entrepreneurship, Foreign Bank Entry JEL codes: F44, F63, G21, G3, O16
Alfaro: Harvard Business School,[email protected]; Beck: Cass Business School, London, and CEPR, [email protected], Calomiris: Columbia Business School, [email protected]. We would like to thank Ross Levine and participants at New York University’s Development Research Institute’s Annual Conference, “Beyond the Nation State,” for useful comments and suggestions. The D&B data was acquired with HBS’ research support.
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1. Introduction
The effects of foreign bank entry have been controversial in both theory and empirical research.
On the one hand, removing entry barriers that limit foreign bank entry should reduce the costs
of external finance for bank-dependent borrowers by allowing banks to diversify, and allowing
banks with low costs of raising capital in one country to redeploy that capital in countries with
higher indigenous costs of capital. This logic suggests that countries that impose barriers on
foreign bank entry should see lower rates of business formation for small and medium-sized
enterprises. On the other hand, some observers worry that foreign banks focus mostly on
incumbent and wealthy firms and may push domestic banks out of the market as the result of
their superior efficiency. According to that view, removing barriers to foreign bank entry might
undermine entrepreneurship by depriving unseasoned young firms of needed funds. This paper
addresses that concern directly by focusing on how foreign bank presence affects
entrepreneurship, measured by new business formation.
From a public policy standpoint it is also crucial to recognize that there is more to
foreign bank entry barriers than legal prohibitions on entry or severe charter restrictions that
apply only to foreign banks. Foreign entry can also be impeded when political and legal
environments favor local bankers, such as when the legal system fails to protect the rights of
arms-length creditors, which favors bank lending to “insiders.” If the legal system provides
little protection to arms-length lenders, then domestic banks linked to firms through crony
networks that control both the firms and the banks may be advantaged in their ability to lend.
The last three decades have seen a rapid but unequal increase in foreign bank entry
across the globe. The former transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe have
experienced some of the biggest changes, with foreign bank participation rising as high as 90
percent, while Western Europe has seen a much slower increase, which occurred only after the
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establishment of the Euro. Several Latin American countries, including Mexico, lowered entry
barriers and saw rapid increases in foreign bank participation. At the same time, many Asian
countries continue to show a relatively small share of international bank lending. One of the
most interesting new twists in foreign banking has been the increased diversity of foreign
banks’ countries of origin. In recent years, partly in response to troubles at home, banks from
the U.S. and Western Europe have shrunk in importance in many developing countries. At the
same time, multi-national banks from emerging market countries (especially those
headquartered nearby) have increased their role. In Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, banks
from South Africa, Nigeria, Morocco and Kenya have increased their participation across the
African continent.
Theory and empirical evidence have been ambiguous on the effects of foreign bank
entry on entrepreneurship. In theory, foreign bank entry could significantly reduce the cost of
credit by bringing capital, technical skills, and product innovation to host countries, which
increases competition and leads to improvements in the efficiency of the banking sector,
ultimately benefitting customers of the banking system, including small and new enterprises.
It is conceivable, however, that fierce competition with foreign banks for funding or
relationships could threaten the survival of local banks and thus lead to reduced access to
finance for many borrowers, especially if foreign banks concentrate on the top and selected
segments of the market. Empirical research examining the effects of foreign bank entry on the
cost of funds has generally supported the view that foreign bank entry lowers the cost of credit
and improves access to credit for less politically connected borrowers (Clarke et al. 2006,
Giannetti and Ongena 2009, 2012, Bruno and Hauswald 2013, Claessens and van Horen 2014).
Some studies, however, find negative associations between foreign bank presence and financial
system performance (Detragiache, Gupta and Tressel 2008, Beck and Martinez Peria 2010,
Gormley 2010, Mian, 2006) although this may be attributable to omitted variables bias. For
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example, Cull and Martinez Peria (2008) show that the negative association between the
foreign bank market share and the level of financial depth can result from the fact that countries
relax bank entry barriers after financial crises.
The nexus among foreign bank entry, entrepreneurship, and economic growth has
received relatively little attention. Voluminous theoretical and empirical work has shown the
importance of firm entry and entrepreneurship for economic development, and also the
importance of well-developed and efficient financial systems for promoting entrepreneurship
(Kerr and Nanda, 2009). It follows that foreign bank entry could be highly relevant for
economic development through its effects in promoting entrepreneurship.
Nevertheless, we know little about how recent shifts in foreign bank entry have affected
access to credit for new entrepreneurs, especially in developing economies. Some research has
suggested that foreign banks tend to “skim the cream” of the credit markets into which they
enter, focusing mainly on wealthy consumers and established firms (Clarke, Cull, Martinez
Peria, and Sanchez 2005, Beck and Martinez Peria 2010, Beck and Brown 2015). Foreign
banks may do so because they have an advantage in the cost of raising capital, but may suffer
a disadvantage in their ability to understand the nuances of local laws and production methods,
which may make it harder for them to fund small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Even
if they have trouble competing in lending to SMEs, foreign bank entry still may benefit SMEs
by competing for the business of large firms, and thereby encouraging domestic banks to shift
more of their lending to SMEs. That is especially possible if foreign entry is associated with
greater competition and a reduction in “connected” lending (domestic lending to connected
borrowers), as Mian (2006) and Giannetti and Ongena (2009, 2012) find is true. Furthermore,
Clarke et al. (2006) find that the self-reported financing obstacles of 3,000 firms in 35
developing and transition economies decline with foreign banks’ share of the banking system,
and this holds for all size categories of firms.
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Evidence of past challenges for foreign bank lending to SMEs may be less relevant
today, given the recent improvements in institutions that protect creditors’ rights, and given the
recent importance of foreign bank entrants from other developing economies. Several countries
have improved their legal frameworks for lending by improving laws governing
collateralization of assets, or by adding or improving new credit registries that make it easier
to monitor the pledging of assets as collateral (Campello and Larrain 2015, Calomiris et al.
2015). New foreign bank entrants from nearby countries may behave differently in their
lending to SMEs than foreign lenders from developed economies. Banks headquartered in
nearby economies with similar economic, legal, and political profiles may be better able to
overcome the challenges that normally limit SME lending by foreign banks headquartered in
developed economies (Mian, 2006; Claessens and van Horen, 2014).
This study gauges the role of foreign banks in fostering new business formation (our
measure of entrepreneurship) using a unique firm-level database covering 36 manufacturing
industries around the world. Importantly, by focusing on the differential effects of foreign
bank entry for business formation across different industries we are able to mitigate
identification concerns that arise in cross-country regressions. Cross-country regressions
assessing the effect of foreign bank entry on business formation suffer from endogeneity biases
associated with omitted variables (country characteristics that happen to be correlated with both
foreign bank entry and domestic business formation) and reverse causality (an economy
experiencing widespread new business formation may attract new bank entrants).
To address these biases, we explore the differential effect that foreign bank entry has
on entry rates across different industries, making use of theories that predict differential
sensitivities of business formation to foreign bank credit supply increases across different
industries. Specifically, we gauge the differential effect of foreign bank entry on business
formation rates across industries either with (a) different needs for external finance or with (b)
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input structures that are more differentiated, therefore, giving rise to more complex production
processes and supplier-buyer relationships dominated by asymmetric information and agency
problems.
If foreign bank entry reduces the cost of credit for all borrowers, including bank-
dependent SMEs (either directly or indirectly, through endogenous shifts in the lending
behavior of domestic banks), then in countries where foreign bank entry is greater, industries
with a higher exogenous dependence on external finance should exhibit greater rates of new
business formation than other industries. On the other hand, if foreign banks cherry-pick or
cream-skim the lowest risk borrowers, and if domestic banks are so harmed by this practice
that they are unable to shift credit supply to other SME borrowers, then we could observe the
opposite effect: greater foreign bank entry could produce lower business formation rates in
industries that rely more on external finance.
Similarly, foreign bank entry may differentially affect SMEs operating in industries
with different production processes. Foreign banks may find it easier to lend to SMEs when
production processes and supply chains are simpler, or where there is less reason for concerns
about supplier-buyer agency problems, as this might require less investment in costly
relationship building with borrowers. If foreign banks are more effective in overcoming
information asymmetries for SMEs operating in industries with lower agency conflicts, then
greater foreign bank entry should result in lower business formation rates in industries with
less standardized inputs. Alternatively, if foreign banks are more effective in overcoming
information asymmetries in industries with higher potential agency conflicts, we should see
that greater foreign bank entry results in higher business formation rates in industries with less
standardized inputs.
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With respect to both of these industry-specific interaction effects for foreign bank entry
– associated either with differences in external finance dependence, or with differences in input
specificity – we also allow for differences that relate to the destination country and the country
of origin for the bank entrant. First, because developing countries suffer higher costs of external
finance, foreign bank entry should have a much greater effect on business formation in those
countries than in developed economies.
Second, we allow for the possibility that banks headquartered in other developing
economies may have be more effective as SME lenders in the developing countries that they
enter. Specifically, we consider whether developing country bank entrants differ with respect
to their effects on business formation, both in finance-dependent industries and in industries
with greater input specificity. Several authors have shown critical differences in the ability of
“South-South” foreign bank entrants, as opposed to “North-South” foreign bank entrants, in
lending “down-market” to smaller and more opaque firms (Mian, 2006). We will therefore test
for the differential effects of “South-South” foreign bank entrants on business formation rates
across industries with different needs for external and reliance on standardized inputs.
Finally, we consider how the legal and institutional environment of destination
countries affect the impact of foreign bank entry. Specifically, we consider how the
enforcement of contracts (a variable found to be important for creditors in several studies,
including Calomiris et al. 2015) affect the effectiveness of foreign bank entry in reducing the
cost of external finance for SMEs, measured by increases in business formation.
Using data across 48 countries and 36 manufacturing industries for the year 2004, we
find that foreign bank presence as of 2003 has important effects on business formation, and
that these effects vary by industry, as well as according to whether destination and host
countries of the bank entrants are developed or developing. In developing countries, but not in
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developed ones, a larger share of foreign banks’ assets in a country’s banking system is
associated with a higher share of entry in industries with an exogenously higher need for
external finance, as measured by Rajan and Zingales (1998). That effect is especially strong
for South-South bank entry, suggesting that this specific category of foreign bank entry creates
an especially large and beneficial impact on the financing costs of young firms.
With respect to the differential effects of foreign bank entry on business formation in
industries with more differentiated (less standardized) inputs, we find that foreign bank entry
into developing economies is associated with higher business formation rates in industries with
more standardized inputs. With respect to this effect, we find that South-South banks’ influence
on business formation in industries with less standardized inputs is lower than developed
countries’ bank entrants.
With respect to the effect of the extent of legal enforcement, we find that the tendency
of foreign banks as a whole to promote business formation in financially dependent industries
is harder when legal enforcement is poor. South-South banks’ effectiveness in spurring business
formation in those sectors, however, is not as dependent on the quality of legal enforcement.
Our study contributes to two literatures. First, we add to the recent empirical literature
on the effects of foreign bank entry on the real economy. Most closely related to our work,
Bruno and Hauswald (2013) show that foreign bank entry helps industries more dependent on
external finance to grow faster. While their paper focuses on industry aggregates and growth,
our underlying data is on firm-level business formation in manufacturing industries. Second,
we contribute to the literature on the factors affecting business formation (our measure of
entrepreneurship). Most closely related to our work, Klapper, Laeven and Rajan (2007) show
that industries with exogenously higher business entry rates grow faster in countries with less
burdensome entry regulation and better credit information sharing. Our paper adds to that list
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the ability of foreign banks to enter, and we further show that the size of that influence depends
on the nature of the industry in which business formation is occurring (i.e., its degree of external
finance dependence, and its input specificity), on the legal environment of the host country,
and on the country of origin of the foreign banks that actually enter.
The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. Section 2 defines the variables we
use and our data sources, and provides descriptive statistics. Section 3 describes the
econometric methodology. Section 4 discusses empirical results. Section 5 concludes.
2. Data
To gauge the importance of foreign bank entrants on business formation (our measure of
entrepreneurship) across industries with different characteristics, we need data on (i) the
presence of foreign banks in each countries’ banking system, (ii) a measure of business
formation, by industry, (iii) industry characteristics associated with external finance
dependence and input specificity, and (iv) the legal system’s quality of enforcement for
creditors. We will discuss each in turn. Table 1 presents descriptive statistics.
2.1. Foreign Banks’ Share of Banking Systems
We rely on a recent data compilation effort by Claessens and van Horen (2014) to
compute the share of foreign-owned banks across countries. These data focus on banks
operating within the host country (so-called “brick and mortar” lending, as opposed to “cross-
border” lending by foreign banks that is booked offshore). Specifically, using and carefully
double-checking information from Bankscope and bank-specific sources, Claessens and van
Horen (2014) track the ownership of most banks across 139 countries between 1995 and 2009,
thus allowing them to compute the share of foreign banks in each country’s banking system,
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but also the home country for each of the banks in each country. In our empirical work, which
focuses on the 48 developing countries in their sample, we use the foreign bank asset share for
2003 as main country-level variable of interest to proxy for the importance of multinational
banks in countries’ banking systems. Our measure of foreign bank presence is the ratio of
foreign banks’ assets to total bank assets, as computed by Claessens and van Horen (2014). We
also construct what we label South-South foreign bank presence, which we define as the ratio
of the assets of foreign banks from developing economies relative to the total assets of banks
in the host developing country.
Figure 1 shows the variation in the market share of foreign banks across countries. The
share of foreign banks ranges from 0 in Vietnam to 100% in Barbados, with a mean of 32.94
(in the worldwide sample of 139 countries). In developing countries (which include what are
commonly called both “low-income” countries and emerging markets), the average foreign
bank share is 42%, while the share of South-South banking is 21%.
As a control measure for each country’s preexisting domestic financial sector depth, we
also include the ratio of private bank credit to GDP from the World Bank’s database. In order
to control for the domestic banking system’s financial depth, while separating out the effect of
foreign bank entry – which we need to do when measuring the effect of foreign bank presence
on business formation – we orthogonalize the standard World Bank measure of private credit
to GDP (regressing that measure on our two measures of foreign bank presence – the ratio of
foreign bank assets to total bank assets, and the South-South measure) and include the residual
from that orthogonalization as a control variable in our regressions. We thus isolate the
component of financial development that is not related to foreign bank entry (be it the general
effect or the effect from entry of South-South banks). This allows us to focus more clearly on
the effect of foreign bank entry while at the same time controlling for the effect of financial
deepening.
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2.2. Business Formation
To measure business formation we construct industry-level data on firm age. We use data from
WorldBase compiled by Dun and Bradstreet, a database of public and private companies in
more than 200 countries and territories.1 The leading U.S. source of commercial credit and
marketing information since approximately 1845, D&B presently operates across countries and
territories either directly or through affiliates, agents, and associated business partners. The
data, compiled from a number of sources including partner firms in dozens of countries,
telephone directory records, web-sites, and self-registration, are meant to provide clients with
contact details and basic operating information about potential customers, competitors, and
suppliers. Information from local insolvency authorities and merger and acquisition records are
used to track changes in ownership and operations.
D&B uses the United States Government Department of Commerce, Office of
Management and Budget, Standard Industrial Classification Manual 1987 edition to classify
business establishments. In fact, Dun & Bradstreet is a government-approved source for
assigning SIC codes to companies. In 1963, the firm introduced the Data Universal Numbering
System (the D&B D-U-N-S® Number), which it uses to identify businesses numerically for
data-processing purposes. The system supports the linking of plants and firms across countries
and tracking of the history of plant and name (including potential) changes. The D&B D-U-N-
1 Early uses of the D&B data include Caves’ (1975) size and diversification pattern comparisons between Canadian and U.S. domestic plants as well as subsidiaries of U.S. multinationals in Canada, and Lipsey’s (1978) observations regarding the reliability of the data for U.S. More recently, Harrison, Love, and McMillian (2004) use D&B’s cross-country foreign ownership information. Other research that has used D&B data includes Black and Strahan’s (2002) study of entrepreneurial activity in the United States, and Acemoglu, Johnson, and Mitton’s (2008) and Alfaro, Conconi, Halfinger and Newman’s (2015) studies of vertical integration, Alfaro and Charlton (2009), Alfaro and Chen (2014), and Fajgelbaum, Grossman and Helpman (2015) analysis of multinational activity and Alfaro, Antràs, Chor and Conconi (2015) analysis of firm boundaries.
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S Number has become a standard business identifier for the United Nations, European
Commission, and U.S. Government.
WorldBase reports establishment age, number of employees, and the four-digit SIC-
1987 code of the primary industry in which a firm operates and the SIC codes of up to five
secondary industries, listed in descending order of importance, as well as sales and exports,
albeit with much less extensive coverage of the latter two. We exclude establishments missing
primary industry and year started information, and government related firms.
We use data for 2004 and 2000 in our analysis. Our measure of business formation is
the firm entry rate, measured as the share of businesses in the industry that are less than two
years old. Firm entry rates in an industry vary between zero and 50 percent, with an average of
3.5 percent.
2.3 Industry characteristics
We use two different industry characteristics to gauge the differential effect of foreign bank
entrants on business formation across industries. First, the industry-level data on external
dependence are from Rajan and Zingales (1998, henceforth RZ) gauge the variation in the
“natural” need for external financial resources across firms in different industries. The
underlying assumption in RZ is that for technological reasons some industries depend more
heavily on external finance than others. Scale economies, gestation period, or intermediate
product intensity might constitute some of those technological reasons. Of course, one can
only observe the actual use of external finance, not the demand for it. If financial markets were
relatively frictionless (as in the United States), the actual use of external finance would
represent the equilibrium of supply and demand. For countries with very well-developed
financial systems, RZ note that external funds will be supplied very elastically to large firms,
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so that the actual use of external finance would primarily reflect the demand for external
finance. Assuming that the variance of the need for external finance across industries is
common across countries we can thus use the actual external dependence of industries as
observed in a country with a very well developed financial system as a proxy for the “natural”
dependence of industries on external finance.
As in RZ, we use the United States to compute the natural external dependence for each
industry. Our calculations are based on U.S. data for 1987-96. External dependence ranges
from -2.8 in Tobacco Products (SIC 21) to 1.4 in Chemical and Allied Products (SIC 28).2
Second, we also consider differences across industries in the degree of standardization
of inputs. Specifically, we follow Rauch (1999) and classify traded commodities into goods
traded on organized commodity exchanges, goods that are reference priced (such as in trade
journals) and differentiated products. Following Nunn (2007) we conjecture that
differentiated goods that have no quoted prices require more intensive relationships between
buyer and seller, and we expect that they generally will entail more complications for lenders.
Using the US input-output tables (with a similar argument as in the case of RZ), Rauch and
Nunn determine which inputs are used in which proportion for each final product across
industries.
We posit that industries with greater input specificity – that is, those that rely more on
relationship-intensive inputs – will present more complex problems for creditors due to their
greater sensitivity to information asymmetries and agency conflicts. We focus on
manufacturing industries in our analysis. The variable ranges from 0.04 in Petroleum and
Related Industries (SIC 29) to 0.86 in Transportation Equipment (SIC 37).
2 We also calculated external dependence for the period 1999-2003 obtaining similar results.
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2.4 The Legal Environment and Creditor Protections
To capture potentially important differences in the legal environment, which may affect the
impact of foreign bank presence on business formation, we use two specific sets of indicators.
First, we use an indicator of legal system quality from Gwartney and Lawson (2004), taken
from Nunn (2007). We also experimented with indicators for the existence and quality of the
legal system’s ability to secure loans with movables collateral. Calomiris et al. (2015) develop
an index to capture the quality of the system of collateralizing with movables collateral using
the World Bank’s Doing Business survey, and they also identify a component of their index
that is particularly important determinants of the score (the existence of a credit registry for
movables). However, we found that the number of observations for this sub-sample of industry-
country observations (roughly one-sixth the sample size of our other regression results) was
too small to be reliable.
3. Methodology
To gauge the importance of foreign bank entrants for business formation, we extend the
methodology first used by Rajan and Zingales (1998), which allows us to avoid, or at least
mitigate, many of the biases associated with cross-country estimations. Specifically, we
employ the interaction of foreign bank presence (a country characteristic) and an industry
characteristic (e.g., external finance dependence) to assess the relationship between foreign
bank presence and the rate of business formation across industries with different characteristics
(in the case of the external finance dependence, the characteristic measures differential needs
for external finance). Subsequently, we also allow for additional interactions that gauge the
effects of legal enforcement (where legal enforcement will enter as an interaction with all other
regressors, which for the sake of algebraic simplicity we do not write out in full here).
Econometrically, we use the following basic regression specification:
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,)Pr*(
)*(
,
,
ki
ikj l
lljjki
tivateCrediizedOrthogonalarIndustrych
ForeignarIndustrychIndustryCountryEntry
εµ
δβα
+
+++=∑ ∑ (1)
where our measure of business formation is Entryi,k which is defined as the share of firms less
than two year old in industry k and country i for the year 2004. Country and Industry are
country and industry fixed effects, respectively, and OrthogonalizedPrivateCredit is the
orthogonalized ratio of private credit to GDP in the country.
Industrychark is a characteristic of the industry, which will sometimes be the variable
External (our measure of dependence on external finance for industry k as measured for a
sample of U.S. companies over the period 1987 to 1996), and sometimes will be the variable
Specificity (our industry-level measure of input specificity). We do not include the share of
foreign banking on its own or the industry characteristics, which are already spanned by
country and industry fixed effects. The fixed effects for industries and countries capture
country- and industry-specific characteristics that might determine business formation patterns.
We thereby isolate the effect that the interaction of external dependence and foreign banking
share has on industry entry relative to country and industry means.
We estimate regression (1) as a tobit regression to account for the censored nature of
the dependent variable. Specifically, a large number of industries and countries show zero
entry rates. The foreign bank share variable gauges the importance of foreign banking at the
end of the respective year, while firm entry rates are flow data computed over a given year. We
regress entry rates for 2004 on the interaction of each country’s foreign 2003 bank share with
each industry’s characteristic. We cluster standard errors on the country-level to take account
of possible unobservable common shocks across different industries in the same country.
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We ran tobit regressions using the levels of foreign bank presence measured in 2003
(the year before our 2004 business formation measure) to predict business formation in
country-industry observations. We also report some regressions using differences, where we
compute business formation in 2004 less business formation in 2000, and use the change in
foreign bank presence from 1999 to 2003. The difference specification has the advantage of
further mitigating any remaining omitted variables bias associated with country-industry
combinations – variables that might matter for the levels of those interactions, but presumably
not for the differences. However, as Claessens and van Horen (2014) note, the quality of their
data diminish the farther back in time they are observed. If the 1999 data are noisy, as Claessens
and van Horen (2014) say they are, then that noise will be amplified when foreign bank
presence is interacted with other variables. For that reason, we generally do not rely on
differenced results (although generally those results are stronger), and we believe that
differenced results are particularly unreliable in specifications that include triple interactions
(e.g., the interaction of an industry characteristic, legal enforcement, and foreign bank
presence).
4. Results
This section reports our empirical findings. We only report results for a sample of developing
host countries; we began with a broad sample of developed and developing host countries, but
unsurprisingly, foreign bank entry into developed economies seems to have no effect on
business formation, so we dropped those observations. As discussed before, we employ two
measures of foreign bank presence: Foreign banks, which measures the asset share of all
foreign banks, and South-South, which captures the asset share of foreign banks headquartered
in other developing countries.
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We begin by reporting regressions that focus on variation in external finance
dependence (External). Next, we estimate regressions that interact Foreign banks and South-
South with the industry characteristic measuring input specificity (Specificity). Finally, we
report results that interact the two sets of industry characteristics (External and Specificity) with
the quality of legal enforcement (Legal).
The positive significance of the first coefficient in column (1) of Table 2 implies that
higher business formation occurs in industries that are both more reliant on more external
finance and located in countries with higher shares of foreign banking. This suggests that a
more prominent role of foreign banks in a country’s banking system eases financing constraints
for new firms and thus enables higher rates of business formation.3
The results in columns (1) and (3) of Table 2 show that the average effect estimated in
column (1) is higher (and more statistically significant) when foreign banks are from other
developing countries (as captured by the South-South measure of foreign bank share). The
results in column (3) are not only statistically significant but are also economically significant.
To gauge the economic effect, we compute the difference in firm entry between the countries
at the 25th and the 75th percentile of foreign bank share (2.55 in Turkey and 60.03 in Panama,
respectively) and the industries at the 25th and 75th percentiles of external dependence (-1.13 in
Fabricate Metal Products, SIC34 and -0.46 in Paper and Allied Products, SIC 26, respectively).
The coefficient marginal estimate suggests a growth difference of 0.3 percentage points, which
is relative to an average rate of 2.8% in our sample of developing economies and implies close
to a 10% change associated with greater presence of South-South banks.4 In column (4) we
3 As we are using a non-linear model, the economic effect of our regression result cannot be computed in a linear way, but is rather computed at the mean value for all other variables. This economic effect has two component, referring to the extensive (zero or positive value) and intensive margins (variation within positive values). 4 The effect for a move from the 25-75th percentiles of external finance and foreign banks implied close to 2% increase relative to the mean.
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show that coefficients are larger and more statistically significant when we employ the
differences specification rather than the levels specification.
Somewhat surprisingly, the coefficient on the interaction of orthogonalized
(domestically based) credit-to-GDP and external finance dependence enters negatively, and the
coefficient is statistically significant in column (4) of Table 2. This indicates that business
formation rates are lower in financially dependent industries when the share domestically based
credit depth, not explained by foreign bank entry, is higher.
The regression results in Table 3 – which are analogous in structure to those in Table 2
– show a negative average relationship between input specificity and foreign banking in
regressions explaining new business formation in developing countries (column 2). As shown
in columns (2)-(4) the difficulty of foreign banks to spur business formation in highly input
specific industries is even lower for South-South banks, although that difference is only
statistically significant in the first-difference specification in column (4). The sign on the
interaction of domestically based credit-to-GDP and specificity, however, is positive and
statistically significant in all four columns of Table 3, indicating that when domestically based
credit is deeper, high-specificity industries exhibit great rates of business formation.
Previous work has shown the importance of an effective institutional framework for a
positive effect of foreign banks on the real economy (e.g. Claessens and van Horen, 2014).
Next, we therefore introduce triple interaction terms to gauge whether the positive effect of
foreign banking on business formation rates in industries with higher need for external finance,
and lower input specificity, vary across countries with different levels of institutional
development to protect creditors’ rights. We also investigate whether those legal-industry
characteristic interactions vary according to the country of origin of the foreign bank. We report
results for these triple interaction specifications in Tables 4 and 5.
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Table 4 investigates the interactions among legal enforcement, foreign bank presence
(by type of foreign bank), and external finance dependence. The positive coefficient at the top
of each column indicates that foreign bank presence has its greatest average effect on business
formation in finance-dependent industries when legal enforcement is good. The negative
significant coefficient on the triple interaction of South-South with External dependence and
Legal in column (2) indicates that South-South foreign presence is less dependent on good
legal enforcement to generate new business formation.
Interestingly, and perhaps surprisingly, the triple interaction of Legal with domestically
based credit depth and external finance dependence is negative, but the simple interaction of
domestically based credit depth with external finance dependence switches sign (compared to
the results in Table 2), and is now positive. This indicates that the negative effect of
domestically based finance depth on business formation in financially dependent industries is
confined to countries with sufficiently high quality of legal enforcement. That is a surprising
result, as we would have expected business start-ups in high external finance dependent
industries to be especially advantaged in environments of greater domestically based financial
depth and superior legal enforcement.
Table 5 is analogous to Table 4, but now we investigate the triple interaction of
Specificity, Foreign banks, and Legal, and also the triple interaction of Specificity, South-South
and Legal. The negative significant coefficients reported in the first row of both columns in
Table 5 indicate that, in relatively good legal environments, foreign bank presence is associated
with an even greater bias in favor of promoting business formation in low-specificity industries.
The negative significant coefficient on South-South*Specificity*Legal in column (2) of Table
5 means that the bias in favor of business formation effects in low-specificity industries located
in good legal environments is even greater for South-South bank presence.
20
The interaction of domestically based credit depth with specificity is positive, as in
Table 3, but surprisingly its interaction with Legal is negative, indicating that the positive effect
of domestically based credit abundance on business formation occurs only in sufficiently poor
legal environments.
We interpret this combination of findings as follows: (1) Foreign bank presence, on
average, promotes business formation in developing countries, especially when the foreign
bank is a South-South bank, and when the industry of interest is characterized by greater
external finance dependence or by more standardized inputs. (2) These effects are larger in
developing countries with good legal enforcement of contracts. (3) South-South banks have a
comparative advantage (relative to other foreign banks) in dealing with poor legal enforcement
environments, and so their influence on business formation rates in finance-dependent
industries is less dependent on the quality of legal enforcement in the host country. (4) Foreign
banks headquartered in developed economies have a comparative advantage (relative to South-
South banks) in lending to more complex industries (those with high input specificity). (5) For
reasons we do not understand, and contrary to our expectations, better legal environments do
not increase the effects of domestically based financial depth on business formation in external
financial dependent industries or in high-specificity industries.
5. Conclusions
This paper assesses the effect of foreign bank entry on business formation. We find that, on
average, foreign bank entry into developing economies is associated with higher business
formation in industries that rely more on external finance and on more standardized inputs.
These effects are stronger in countries with better legal enforcement. However, our results also
point to important differences across different types of foreign banks. Specifically, the effect
in developing countries on business formation in industries with a higher reliance on external
21
finance is stronger for when foreign bank presence is coming from other developing countries
(South-South banks). At the same time, the effect of South-South bank presence on business
formation is weaker for industries that rely more on high-specificity inputs. The impact of
South-South entrants on business formation is not as dependent on a high quality level of
contract enforcement.
Our differential findings on foreign banks from developed and developing countries are
in line with some findings in previous studies, but also provide new insights. Specifically, our
findings suggest that, on the one hand, developed country foreign banks enjoy a comparative
advantage as entrants into developing economies from their ability to deal with relatively
complex industries. Developing country foreign banks, on the other hand, have a different
comparative advantage; specifically, they seem better able to address enforcement problems
typical for developing country borrowers, especially if those borrowers operate in industries
with standardized input use.
Our findings have important repercussions for the policy debates both on institutional
reform and foreign bank entry in developing countries and the interaction between the two. In
general, foreign bank entry can only maximize its benefits in the presence of an effective
institutional framework; entry of foreign banks from other developing markets, however, may
be relatively helpful when the institutional environment is not idea.
Does the impact of foreign bank presence reflect the direct actions of the foreign banks
or the indirect consequences of their entry for changes in the strategies of other lenders?
Because our evidence indicates systematic industry-specific effects of foreign-bank entry, the
former interpretation seems more likely (indirect effects are less likely to have specific industry
profiles). Still, a clear understanding of the mechanism through which foreign bank entry
22
affects business formation must await a micro-level study of the changes in bank-firm
connections that result from foreign bank entry.
23
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26
Table 1
Summary Statistics
N mean sd min max
Entry 871 2.850 4.420 0.000 33.330
Foreign Bank Share (All_2003) 871 40.483 32.035 0.110 100.000 Foreign Bank Share (South-South, 2003) 871 20.605 26.360 0.000 100.000
Private Credit to GDP 871 38.171 28.179 3.636 126.461
External Finance 871 -0.662 0.734 -2.876 1.415
Specificity 871 0.529 0.202 0.037 0.862
Quality Legal System 755 5.410 1.040 2.850 7.600
27
Table 2
Foreign Banks, Business Formation, and External Dependence:
Tobit Models
(1) (2) (3) (4) Levels Levels Levels Diffs
Foreign banks*External dependence 0.0040** 0.0018 0.0143*** (0.002) (0.002) (0.000351) Orthogonalized credit*External dependence -0.0006 -0.0011 -0.0009 -0.00262*** (0.002) (0.002) (0.002) (0.000399) South-South banks*External dependence 0.0003*** 0.0003*** 0.000201*** (0.000) (0.000) (0.0000184)
Constant 4.7075*** 4.6644*** 4.7085*** -31.29*** (0.430) (0.426) (0.431) (0.021) Constant (Sigma) 7.1442*** 7.1465*** 7.1450*** 6.963*** (0.973) (0.973) (0.974) (0.00801)
Observations 871 871 871 849
28
Table 3
Foreign Banks, Business Formation, and Input Specificity:
Tobit Models
(1) (2) (3) (4)
Levels Levels Levels Diffs
Foreign banks*Specificity -0.0160*** -0.0157*** -0.0195*** (0.006) (0.005) (0.000611) Orthogonalized credit*Specificity 0.0325*** 0.0346*** 0.0324*** 0.0509*** (0.006) (0.006) (0.006) (0.0009) South-South banks*Specificity -0.0002 -0.0001 -0.00321***
(0.000) (0.000) (0.000046)
Constant 5.3806*** 5.0674*** 5.3674*** -31.06*** (0.451) (0.448) (0.460) (0.0212) Constant (Sigma) 7.1234*** 7.1301*** 7.1240*** 6.959*** (0.972) (0.973) (0.973) (0.00794)
Observations 871 871 871 849
29
Table 4
Foreign Banks, Business Formation, External Dependence, and Legal Enforcement:
Tobit Models
Levels Levels
Foreign banks*External dependence*Legal 0.00290*** 0.00507*** 6.25E-05 6.12E-05
Foreign banks*External Dependence -0.0109*** -0.0278*** 0.000402 0.000397
Legal*External dependence -0.232*** -0.169*** 0.00407 0.00401
South-South*External dependence*Legal -0.000206*** 2.86E-06
South-South*External dependence 0.00148*** 1.69E-05
Orthogonalized credit*External dependence 0.00660*** -0.000831** 0.000342 0.000337
Orthogonalized credit*External Finance*Legal -0.000684*** 0.000367*** 5.92E-05 5.80E-05
Constant -30.29*** -29.93*** 0.0203 0.0201
Constant (Sigma) 6.560*** 6.558*** 0.00845 0.00863
Observations 735 735
30
Table 5
Foreign Banks, Business Formation, Input Specificity, and Legal Enforcement:
Tobit Models
Levels Levels
Foreign banks*Specificity*Legal -0.0176*** -0.0163*** 7.09E-05 7.09E-05
Foreign banks*Specificity 0.0961*** 0.0859*** 0.000487 0.000479
Orthogonalized credit*Specificity 0.249*** 0.246*** 0.000447 0.00045
Legal*Specificity 0.945*** 0.986*** 0.00545 0.00528
South-South*Specificity*Legal - 0.000124*** 5.79E-06
South-South*Specificity 0.00100*** 3.52E-05
Orthogonalized credit*Specificity*Legal -0.0391*** - 0.0389*** 7.41E-05 7.42E-05
Constant -30.81*** -30.97*** 0.0207 0.0199
Constant (Sigma) 6.534*** 6.531*** 0.00806 0.00839
Observations 734 734
31
Figure 1
Foreign bank share across developing countries
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
BB
S
ES
T
PE
R
CIV
HR
V
ME
X
BIH
BW
A
NE
R
PA
N
UR
Y
RO
M
MW
I
LVA
MU
S
MD
A
AR
G
KA
Z
BR
A
BLR
PA
K
PH
L
CO
L
EC
U
UZ
B
MLT
TH
A
TU
R
ZA
F
Foreign bank share 2003